For Kit’s big 40th birthday, we took a weekend trip up to Dallas to see a Rangers baseball game and enjoy brunch at the Dallas Arboretum.  Kit took some ribbing from her fancy friends who thought this did not sound like fun at all.  They would rather go to their vacation houses in San Francisco or Italy than plain old Dallas.  But Kit had a good time, and the kids had a ball.  We were wiped out and still recovering days later from the 36-hour trip (which is the longest we could get out of town).  A few highlights…

• Much to Claire’s chagrin, The Rangers game went into extra innings.  By the 10th inning, though, Claire had come to accept that the game was going to take a long time, and she started to get very good at cheering when it seemed like people were excited about something. The Rangers lost to the Royals 4-1.
• Throughout the weekend, Claire was a character named Scrumford the dog.  Scrumford is a sweet, shaggy dog who gets in trouble despite his best intentions.  He loves milkbones dipped in peanut butter and belly rubs from his cousin Susie.  Molly took on the alternating characters of Susie, Cuppy (Scrumford’s dog friend), and Old Whiskers (yes, a cat).
• Molly missed her nap both Saturday and Sunday.  She was extra crazy at bedtime but otherwise handled it well.
• We got to bed late on Saturday night (thanks largely to Dallas traffic) and all slept in until 8:30 am on Sunday, shattering our previous record by an hour and also pushing the rest of the day about two hours late past the expected 6:30 wake up time (who needs an alarm?).
• The girls absolutely adored the Dallas Arboretum.  Claire said it was “literally” what heaven must be like.  We could have spent all day there but had to get home.  To top it off, Claire got some shark’s teeth and a butterfly necklace at the gift shop with her allowance ($8).  Molly got a couple of sheets of stickers which she promptly stuck to each other in one big clump.
• The girls traveled well besides getting a little crazy at times from over-excitement in the hotel room.
• The girls each gave Kit a ceramic creation they hand-painted at Ceramics Bayou.

And the rest I will leave to the pictures…